Okay, I know that reviewing travel destinations and four-star international hotels isn't really a Yelp thing... but, we stayed here for four nights during our two-week Spain trip, and this was definitely a lowlight of the entire experience.
It's not that the hotel is actually bad, per se. It's just that the experience was awful, and not in ways that were really fixable or the hotel staff's fault. It just all kind of snowballed. I'm not saying this will happen to you, but with so many luxury hotels catering to tourists in the area, I'm not sure this is a good choice.
Annoying thing #1: Our room opened onto the dining area, which is lit 24 hours a day. The room did not have blackout curtains, only a set of shades, and was highly illuminated, even at night.
Annoying thing #2: This hotel appears to be popular with groups. We had to wait to check in, because a group of (not kidding) ~50 people all showed up a few minutes before we did, and the hotel seemingly had no way of anticipating or dealing with this issue. This isn't a huge deal in isolation, but the lobby area is very narrow, and you have to go through it to get to your room. Multiple times during our trip, we would return to the lobby area and find it unpassable due to massive groups just milling around and taking up space with their bodies and luggage. I understand that space in Barcelona is at a premium, but the mismatch of the layout being awful for groups and lots of groups using it anyway sucks.
Worst thing ever #3: The hot water in our room had serious issues. It had to be primed by letting it run cold for a long time, and would eventually heat up. Then, in the middle of most showers, it would turn cold again for a few minutes, before heating back up. This wasn't a problem anywhere else, and even the hotel staffed seemed baffled by it, but couldn't do anything about it. Taking showers here was a miserable experience, and I had to get up early in the morning to "prime" the hot water for my wife so that it would be able to give her a five minute shower's worth of uninterrupted heat.
Minor annoyance #4: We pre-booked our trip and pre-paid for all hotels/etc. months in advance. Unlike the other places we stayed, this one (accidentally?) attempted to charge for the room when we left. It was easily taken care of in ~2 minutes, but would have sucked had I not been paying attention and basically lost 600 euros as a result.
Annoying thing #5: The walls of this place aren't very thick, and things are louuuddddd. Someone talking in the hallway is basically someone talking in your room. When someone above you showers, it's like the shower in your own room is running. In the room across from us, we had a bunch of children. It felt like those children were sitting in our room, pulling our hair. It is what it is, but that's not great.
Good thing #1: This hotel has a great location, because it's about a mile to walk to most of the major attractions, which means you aren't super-far from one thing or another at the expense of being close to something else.
Good thing #2: The staff are super-friendly and very pleasant. Nothing here should be seen as an indictment of the staff, who were all hard workers and really enhanced our experience. It's just that the hotel itself had too many unfortunate quirks and downsides. read more